Consumer Behaviour

Shopping, Buying and Evaluating

Session 8
 Agenda
• Individual Decision-making (Chapter 9)

• Shopping, Buying and Evaluating (Chapter 3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzRDEKyqIJs
 Chapter 3
Shopping, Buying and Evaluating
 Purchase Issues
• Factors operating at the time of purchase can
dramatically influence the consumer decision-
making process. Many factors over and above
the quality of the product or service influence
the outcome of an actual transaction.

• Q. What kind of factors can influence you at the time of the

purchase and thus, can affect your decision-making process?
Factors Affecting a Consumer’s Choice

Q. What is the definition of consumer behaviour?

 Antecedent States
• A person’s mood or physiological condition at
the time of purchase can have a major impact
on what is brought and can also affect how
products are evaluated.
– Behavior directed towards specific goal states

Stress can reduce a consumer’s information processing

and problem solving.
 Antecedent States
Situational Effects: Mood
• A mood is a specific combination of pleasure and
arousal
• A mood state (either positive and negative) biases
judgements of products and services in that
direction

Dimensions of Emotional States

 Antecedent States
Situational Effects: Mood
• Moods can be affected by store design

Dimensions of Emotional States

 Antecedent States
Situational Effects: Consumption Situations
• The usage context of a product can be a basis for
segmentation:
– Consumers look for different product attributes,
depending on the use to which they intend to put their
purchase.
Facebook is testing ads targeted in real time based on the users’
status updates (What’s on your mind?) and wall posts.
 Antecedent States
Social Surroundings
• The presence or absence of other people (co-consumers)
can also affect a consumer’s decisions.
• Q. What do you think when there are few people at a
restaurant?
• The presence of large numbers of people in a consumer
environment increases arousal levels
– The consumer’s actual experience will depend on their
intepretation of and reaction this arousal
• Density and crowding
 Antecedent States
Social Surroundings
• Density: the actual number of people occupying space

• Crowding: the negative affective state as a result of this

density
 Antecedent States
Social Surroundings
• The type of customers who patronize a store or service
can serve as a store attribute.
– We may infer something about the store by examining its
customers.
 Antecedent States
Social Surroundings
Co-Consumers and Dress Codes
 Antecedent States
Temporal Factors
• Time is an important resource that often determines
how much effort and search will go into a decision.
– Time poverty
 Antecedent States
Shopping Motives
• Shopping a way to acquire needed products and services, but motives are also
important
– Motivations will also affect how consumer evaluate different aspects of the
retail experience

• Shopping motives
– Anticipated utility: expectations of benefits
– Role enactment: taking on the culturally prescribed roles regarding shopping
– Choice optimization: find the best buy
– Negotiation: bargaining
– Affilitiation: shopping centres natural place for socialization
– Power and Authority: feeling superior to the personnel
– Stimulation: shopping just for fun
 Antecedent States
Shopping Orientations
• Consumers can be also segmented based on their
shopping orientations or general attitudes about
shopping
• Economic shopper – rational and goal-oriented shopper.
• Personalized shopper – tends to form strong attachments
to store personnel.
• Ethical shopper – e.g. likes to support local small shops.
• Apathetic shopper – does not like shopping and sees it as
unnecessary.
• Recreational shopper – sees shopping as a fun and social
activity.
 Purchase Environment
The Shopping Experience
• Store loyalty: not only brand but also store loyalty

• With increasing competition from non-store alternatives,

creating a positive shopping experience has never been
more important.
– Clicks vs Bricks; Click and Collect

• Online shopping is growing in importance and this new

way to acquire products has both good and bad aspects.
• Q. Advantages and disadvantages of online shopping?
 Purchase Environment
The Shopping Experience
BENEFITS For the Consumer For the Firm
Shop 24 hours a day The world is the
markeplace
Less travelling Decreases costs of doing
business
Fast info collection Very specialized businesses
can be successful
More choice Real-time pricing
Greater price info
More products and lower
prices for less developed
and less affluent
Participate in virtual
auctions
Fast delivey
Electronic communities
 Purchase Environment
The Shopping Experience
LIMITATIONS
For the Consumer For the Firm
Lack of security Lack of security
Fraud Must maintain site to reap
benefits
Can’t touch items Fierce price competition
Exact colour may not Conflicts witn conventional
reproduce on computer retailers
monitors
Expensive to order and Legal issues not resolved
return
Potential breakdown of
human relationships
 Purchase Environment
Servicescapes: Retailing as Theatre
• A retail culture has arisen where the act of shopping has
taken on entertainment and experiential dimensions as
retailers compete for customers’ attention and loyalty.
• The customer is not a passive recipient of the offerings of
the purchase environment, but rather an active co-
creator of this environment and the meanings attached
to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-36MBQkU4Q
 Purchase Environment
Servicescapes: Retailing as Theatre
• Marketers have to develop stores that stimulate
people and allow them to shop and be entertained at
the same time
• Theming (e.g. associations with images of nature,
animals and man made places)
The American girl The starbucks
servicescape servicescape

https://www.youtube.com/user/Starbucks
 Purchase Environment
• Store Image (e.g. location, merchandise, sales
staff)
• The design and the store is central to the perception of
the goods displayed there
• Atmospherics (colours, scents and sounds)
• The conscious designing of space and its various
dimensions to evoke certain effects on buyers
• Light colours impart a feeling of spaciousness and serenity;
bright colours create excitement
• Diners who listened to loud, fast music ate more food

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjgkQ6bq7aE
 Purchase Environment
• In-store decision-making: many purchases are
strongly influenced by the store environment

• Unplanned buying: recognition of new needs while

within the store
• Impulse buying: when the person experiences a
sudden urge that they cannot resist
 Purchase Environment
• Point of purchase (POP) stimuli are very
important sales tools.
– Product samples, elaborate package displays, place-
based media, and in-store promotional materials such
as ‘shelf talkers’.
• POP stimuli are particularly useful in promoting
impulse buying.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/north-face-stores-floor-disappears-forcing-startled-shoppers-climb-walls-160745
Examples of POPs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6V_HPKM_D8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbNi4IELsag
 Purchase Environment
• A salesperson can be the crucial link between
interest in a product and its actual purchase.
The consumer’s encounter with a salesperson
is a complex and important process. The
outcome can be affected by such factors as
the salesperson’s similarity to the customer
and their perceived credibility.
Examples of Salespeople
 Post-Purchase Satisfaction
• Marketers need to be concerned about a consumer’s
evaluations of a product after they buy it as well as
before.
– Q. WHY?
• A person’s overall feelings about the product after they
buy it determine customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
• Many factors influence our perceptions of product
quality, including price, brand name and product
performance.
• These cues are often used by consumers to relieve
perceived risk and assure that they have made smart
purchase decisions.
• Satisfaction is not just a matter of functional but also
of hedonic performance of the product.
• Satisfaction levels are also determined by the quality
of alternatives that were not purchased.
 Post-Purchase Satisfaction
• Our degree of satisfaction often depends on the
extent to which a product’s performance is
consistent with our prior expectations of how well
it will function as well as the expectations about
the quality of alternatives not purchased

• If performs the way the consumer thought it

would, consumers may not think much about it.
• If it fails to meet the expectations, consumers
dissatisfied.
• If performance higher than the expectations,
consumers satisfied and pleased (delighted)
 Post-Purchase Satisfaction
Acting on Dissatisfaction
• The power of quality claims is most evident when a
company’s product fails.
• Consumers can take one or more possible courses of action if
dissatisfied with a product or service:
• Voice response – the consumer can appeal directly to the
retailer
• Private response – express dissatisfaction about the store
or product to friends or boycott the store
• Third party response – taking legal action or registering a
complaint with industry association or press
Q. How do you handle your dissatisfactions with consumer
products?
 Next Week
• Self (chapter 5)

• Group Influence and Opinion Leadership

(Chapter 10)